POMONA – Matty West breathed in the exhaust from a 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit.

“The exhaust smells like barbecue,” said West, a graduate student at Cal Poly Pomona. “Smells better than diesel. You get very hungry.”

In fact, the pale-blue hatchback does not run on diesel fuel but on biodiesel, which is made from vegetable oil.

The car produces drastically reduced emissions and gets 45 miles per gallon, West said.

Students at Cal Poly Pomona’s John T. Lyle Center for Regenerative Studies make their own fuel, which costs 45 cents per gallon.

“It’s pretty green and cheap living,” West said.

Conservation and sustainable living was the overall theme of the university’s Earth Day Celebration on Friday at the Lyle Center. The event featured workshops, displays and demonstrations.

The workshops covered topics including traveling by bike every day, harvesting and storing seeds for a home garden, construction alternatives in building designs and materials, and houses powered by solar energy.

Opened in 1994, the Lyle Center is an experiment in sustainable living, where students and faculty live and work in solar-heated buildings, recycle their waste and grow their own organic food.

Silvia Garcia, 26, said that since taking a biology class, she’s become more environmentally aware and wants to conserve. She enjoyed the workshop on making biodiesel fuel.

“The product of biodiesel exists and yet the government doesn’t push it,” Garcia said. “This is going to save the Earth.”

Liz Elliot, co-director of CICLE, Cyclists Inciting Change thru Live Exchange, came to Earth Day to promote a “car-lite” lifestyle.

Bicycles are a form of sustainable transportation that have zero emissions, transport weight efficiently and don’t require people to be in great shape, Elliot said.

“It’s an accessible way – even for people who aren’t in great shape – to start making a transportation choice for the environment, for health, for the community,” Elliot said.

Ninety percent of car emissions come from the first mile of a seven-mile trip, making those short errands the most polluting, according to Elliot. Although technology is improving, it won’t solve the problem of urban sprawl, wetlands destruction or dangerous streets, she said.

Added junior Alex Osorio: “It’s important for people to understand \ the environment is sacred for humans, for all living creatures.”